Fundamental Image (1 of 2)
Fundamental Image
A Story in Six Sections of Unequal Length
i.
..prologue..
He hears it on the radio, and for the first measure, something coils inside of him, low in his stomach, lean and hungry and needing. Sam closes his eyes and thinks of Jess during the first verse, heat spreading through his veins, the smell of her soap drifting up his nostrils. The little groans she made the morning after a night of great sex, as if she was sore and content and tired and wanted more, all at once, somehow thread themselves through the bridge and then comes the throaty refrain. He slams his eyes open and his hand on the radio, pushing the station seek button without thinking, just needing to change the song. Dean looks at him, concerned and confused and a little pissed off, and static fills the silence until something else comes on, Pantera or Rob Zombie, or a hair band from the eighties; just something else and that’s what’s important. Whatever the song is, whoever the band is, Dean slides his eyes back to the road and is nodding his head to the beat in seconds. Sam sits there, stares out of the window and ignores the cornfields of Nowhere, Nebraska and the flickering icicle gaze of Dean, coming back to rest on the side of Sam’s face every so often, quick and subtle. Sam ignores everything and thinks of Jess.
--
It’s late when he comes home from the library, sometime in the witching hour, and the walk is quiet in the way only a college town can be quiet at night. Loud music drifts from one direction, a sudden outburst of drunken laughter, quickly hushed, from another. The streets are empty, parties still going strong and everyone else at home, and Sam’s fingers twitch in the pockets of his worn-in hoodie, just waiting for something to dance out of the shadows. The feeling’s instinctive, trained into him; he can feel something unpleasant just waiting to happen, some confrontation, but he makes it back to the house and inside with no trouble. Jess is home, her car parked on the road, and strains of some music are coming from the bedroom. Sam closes the front door and locks it, standing there for a moment before he straightens the crucifix, adjusts the warding runes, and layers an extra line of salt underneath the doormat. Habits impossible to break, not that he would want to, that feeling of ‘soon’ and ‘danger’ clawing at his spine.
Jess has made cookies and Sam takes one as a pre-dinner snack, half of it gone before he ever reaches the hallway. The bedroom door’s closed and he hesitates before going in. Jess is fiddling with the radio, her back to him, but she turns around at his quiet greeting, going over and kissing him easily, comfortably, guiding him to sit on the bed. “I missed you too, Jess. Studying went well, thanks for asking.” He smiles, expression intimate and saying more than teasing words ever can. “I missed you,” he says, and “The cookies are great.” Jess laughs against his lips, helping him kick off his shoes, before she moves away, off of him, to stand up. He starts to get up, follow her to the kitchen, but she won’t let him, makes him sit there on the edge of the bed, legs splayed apart. Jess puts a hand on each knee, nails digging through his jeans and hooking on the skin underneath, and then she is bending over to talk to him, one inch from his face.
“I know,” she is saying, “that there is something you’re holding back. Something you’re not telling me.” Sam thinks of the runes chalked underneath the paint in each room, the salt and rosemary sachets behind the drywall, and makes a noise of protest that dies in his throat after one look from her. “Not about your family, Sam,” she says, and pokes him in the chest. It hurts and he looks up at her, puzzled and the slightest bit angry, starting to get the idea that this is the confrontation he’s been expecting and wondering why his senses are going off when it’s just him and Jess here, now. “It’s something in you, Sam, some emotion or feeling or thing that you never show me. Some part of you, something that is you.” Her voice softens, drawls in a way that only girls who live in Southern California can drawl, all sand and surf and late-night summer parties on the ocean, and now he’s paying attention. “I love you Sam. I want all of you.”
The look in her eyes hurts him, but before he can say anything, move, she’s stepped back and pushed a button on the CD player. “Stay,” she says, and he doesn’t move. He doesn’t know the song, can’t say he’s ever heard it before, but when the singer starts up, gravelly voice screaming for sex, he can’t focus on the words because Jess is undressing. Stripping.
She takes her hair down first and shakes it out. Sam watches as loose curls swing in the air, settle around her face, dust her shoulders. Fingers long and slender knot themselves in her hair and Sam realises her hips are moving. Jess throws her head back, hair flying everywhere, and his eyes fall on the clean line of Jess’ throat and neck. He can’t move, mesmerised by the movement of muscles under the skin, the rhythm of beating blood. He’s tasted that blood before, by accident when they were moving in, and the remembered tang of spice and musk and sunlight makes him lick his lips, stirs an appetite he never wants to admit to.
There are fingers blocking his view of her neck and he stops himself from growling as he meets Jess’ eyes. Hers hold heat, a threat and a promise, and he stills the hunger inside as her fingers move downwards. One hand glides over the hollow at the base of her neck and goes down, over the cotton-clothed swell of one breast, the other tangles up in her hair again. He follows the path of her hand as it travels over breast, stomach, hip, and undoes the shirt’s lowest button in its way, as it dips between the press of her thighs. That’s the moment Sam realises what she’s doing, about to do, and he moves, wiping damp palms on his jeans. “Jess,” he says, voice sticky like wet heat and pleading. “Jess,” he says again, and she puts a finger over her lips in wordless command. He almost doesn’t obey, urged on by something inside to take her, own her, but she unfastens the top button and looks at him, all soft lashes and swaying hips. He sits back, suddenly and achingly aware that he’s hard, and watches her.
Jess alternates the buttons, low and then high and back again, fingers gliding over her skin, first visible then under her shirt, in the valley between her breasts and then of top of them, playing with the edges of her shirt, nails catching the lace on her bra, flicking her nipples until they’re like pebbles, visible through two layers. He can feel his skin burning, knows the heat he’s giving off now must feel like a fire and he’s going to explode, there’s no way he can hold himself together. He hears laughter, high and childlike, but then Jess slides the shirt off and lets it fall in a crumpled heap behind her on the floor, and God, if her shoulders aren’t the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen he’s going to die.
She’s wearing the pair of low-rise jeans Sam loves, he sees, as she hooks her thumbs in the empty belt loops and moves her hips like a woman possessed, all unearthly grace and supernatural slide. Sam murmurs, “Christo,” and he can feel the sting of her smile without needing to see it. He only speaks Latin when they sleep, after sex, and he never explains it except as a blessing and refuses to answer questions about when he learned it or why. “Christo,” he says again, voice catching on the initial syllable, drawing out the vowel, hissing between his teeth at the end, and he’s not sure anymore if it’s a prayer of blessing or protection or need.
She doesn’t stop. Instead, two fingers glide down her stomach then under her jeans as the other hand curls in her hair before sliding down over her face, index finger catching her lower lip. Sam isn’t sure where to look, up or down, but he hears her tongue snake out and lick her finger up one side before pulling into her mouth and he’s captivated. Her cheeks hollow out and she swallows, as if that’s his cock in her mouth instead of her finger, and this time he can’t hold back the half-groan, half-growl strangling him as he pressed the heel of his palm against his jeans and the erection underneath. His cock jumps when she hums and when she opens her eyes, he sees the beginnings of a hesitant triumph in their depths.
The jeans come off next, as he’s learning to breathe again. The button undone with finger and thumb, the zipper pulled down tooth by tooth, the denim moved off of her hips and ass with little shakes in time to the music Sam can barely hear and the unsteady beat of his heart thudding seven times as loud. The jeans fall, after that, fall to the ground and she steps out of them, kicking them away carelessly. Jess turns, arms and hands above her head, fingers twirling in time to the beat. She turns slowly and lets Sam devour her with his eyes; the dusting of freckles across her stomach, the silhouetted slope of her breasts, the curve of her hips, the jutting angles of her shoulder-blades. She has a tattoo on the small of her back, a rose with two leaves, and it moves as she undulates, as if a breeze is blowing over it, but the only movement beside Jess is the harsh rise-and-fall rhythm of Sam’s chest and he is burning up, so hot he could melt, breathing fire as he watches.
Jess is wearing matching underwear, a white lacy bra and matching boy-shorts, and Sam can’t focus on either, too busy watching Jess’ face when she finally stops turning, sways facing him. He stole the heat from her eyes, can feel it dancing up and down his arms, but now they bleed desire and desperation instead. She holds his gaze as she reaches behind to unclasp her bra, slips each strap off, holds her breasts for a moment, as if weighing them, memorising the feel of them, the angle beneath them, then lets the bra slide off to hit the floor. Her nipples are dusky and hard and she pinches one, rolls it between fingers and nails before doing the same to the other one. “Sam,” she whispers, his name like a Latin prayer, and fire rushes through him so searing it physically hurts.
When the wave of pain is gone, all he can see is the fingers gripping the sides of her panties, the way her pupils are so dilated he can’t see the colour of her eyes. Christo, he thinks, and then he doesn’t, not when his eyes fix on the flushed skin between eyelid and eyebrow, the way she’s holding herself ready for this last fall of clothing to leave her open to him, for him. “Sam,” she whispers again, and the sound goes straight to his cock, just after it conjures a path for the deepest part of him to follow in search of the surface and an outlet. Pain, rage, yearning slam into him, all-consuming save for the hunger, the need that he never allows himself to feel for fear of breaking the world with the force of it.
He’s up and moving before he realises, the music, the dance, everything forgotten except Jess and his need to have her. He presses her against the wall, holds her wrists above her head with one hand while the other shoves her underwear down and his lips attack her neck, kiss-shaped bruises forming almost immediately. When she arches into him, shifts her hips forward and up, seeking friction, he lets her go and drops to his knees, hands settling around her hips in a press of ownership. She moves, starts to say something and he growls this time, deep and rumbling, furious and hungry, as he’s never growled before. She stops, keeps her hands above her head and when his tongue searches out her clit a moment later, her nails are leaving gouges in the paint.
He tongues her until she comes, then he fucks her against the wall until he comes inside of her, her muscles twitching around him from her first climax. Then he carries her to the bed and repeats everything, vision half-hidden by an angry intensity he’s never felt before, never let himself feel before.
When the feeling is gone, exorcised, after they’re both sticky with come and sweat, he runs fingers all over Jess’ body, mapping out every bite mark, every scratch, every bruise with apologetic tenderness. She leans up and catches a cheek with the palm of her hand and kisses him, all tongue and teeth, for long minutes that neither of them count. They fall asleep without speaking and the next day she’s making little morning-after noises and wearing the most self-satisfied smile Sam’s ever seen on anyone.
--
A slap on his head and when Sam turns to glare at Dean, he barely resists the urge to bare his teeth and attack. The anger and need, so much more now that Jess is gone, so much closer to the surface, taste like sulphur as he forces both down his throat and back into his chest. Dean gives him this look that’s half-concern and half-scold and says, “I said we’re here, Jesus, Sammy. What the hell were you thinking about?” Dean nods and he follows his brother’s pointed gaze to the bulge beneath his jeans. Sam sighs, shakes his head, and opens the car door, ignoring the pressing hunger of his erection in favour of loading shotguns with rock salt.
ii.
..exposition..
The spirit Sam and Dean have been tracking for days finally dies in a hail of salt and fire, but they don’t leave untouched. Dean’s bleeding, a large open tear on the side of his head, but Sam’s worse, like usual, this time thanks to a side-effect of his gift and curse, something the spirit knew about and manipulated. He’s effectively blind, until his mind kicks back in, blind and yet he can see, like his eyes are their own night-vision camera, catching orbs and shadows. It’s happened before, other spirits and poltergeists in other towns pulling the same mind-tricks, though he thought he’d warded against that happening this time. Sam looks around and can see vague outlines of doors, the clear signs on bed and closet of a spirit’s touch, the glow of crucifixes and silver in their gear bag but nothing else, which means his rune to prevent this from happening must have broken.
When he looks for Dean, wildly, thinking in the first second of painful panic that the blindness might be permanent, he catches a prayer bubbling up his throat but lets the groan go through, the growl of a hunger he hasn’t felt since Jess died, and never for his brother. He can see Dean, see the outline of his body, the pull of skin across muscle and bone, the glow of his amulet, clearer than he can ever remember seeing him before. The blood catches his attention, holds his eyes fixed as Dean kneels in front of him, pleading for him to say something, fingers scrabbling over Sam’s face and shoulders.
“Sam? Sammy, come on, talk to me here, c’mon,” Dean begs, and a taut smile crosses Sam’s lips, enough to make Dean pause, raise an eyebrow. “Something funny?” Dean asks, and it looks like he’s about to say more, or move, so Sam puts a finger across his brother’s lips, tilts his brother’s face, and licks the track of blood drying on his brother’s neck. Dean does move, this time, and Sam holds his shoulder and growls, hungry and fuming until Dean stills, tense. Sam licks his way up to the wound, tongues it, tastes blood and panic and want, and then gives Dean a sleepy, satisfied smile before falling unconscious.
--
Sam wakes up to the smell of burning sage and salt, and he groans as he covers his eyes with his palms. “Christo,” he hears, and so he rasps, somewhat disbelieving, “Did you just Christo me?”
“Say St. Michael’s prayer,” Dean says, commands, and Sam takes a breath to argue, but Dean tells him again so he shifts, lying on his back, and recites the full version, the one they use for complicated exorcisms, every stanza with extra repetitions, feeling for a moment the phantom press of Jess against him, the elusive tickle of her hair on his chest. When he’s done, the silence in the room stretches tight between them.
Sam’s not sure if he really wants to open his eyes, he’s not really sure if he has his sight back yet, though he thinks he’s reached at least the point where he can tell light and dark, because the brightness hurt when he woke up. He moves his hands and flutters his eyelids, wincing, before opening them completely. No sight, but Dean has the lights on and between those, the sharp edges of his brother, and the less distinct lines of walls, doors, and furniture, not to mention the feeling of the bed he’s on, they’re in another motel, roomy but not overly so. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and Dean sits on the edge of the bed, weight tilting the mattress in a slanting feeling Sam recognises, if only he could remember from where or when.
“Fuck, Sammy,” Dean says, and his voice is low and threaded with pain. “I thought you were possessed again and I just-what happened to your runes? You promised they were gonna work. Next spirit we have, I am leaving you the fuck in the car.” Sam smiles, all angles and repression, and the sound of his own voice, foreign to him, holds echoes of screams and spirits. “Sorry,” is all he can say before he coughs and coughs, until his head is ringing with a hundred types of pain. He can hear Dean sigh, feels the bed move before Dean gets up and tells him to sleep it off. Sam tries to argue, but he falls asleep with the after-impression of Dean’s hand reaching for his face and then dropping away burned on his eyes. He thinks, in that hazy moment somewhere between slumber and sleep, that it’s a good thing he’s never told Dean he can still see his older brother when he’s blind like this.
--
His dreams are filled with fire, fire and orbs, until the presence of a thousand dead eat the heat Sam’s giving off in the astral plane. The fire is normal, all he’s dreamed about for years on end, apart from the visions and starvation that runs bone-deep; that it has always followed him here is no surprise. He finds the astral when he’s been physically knocked around and short-circuited and nothing can stop his travels, though not for lack of trying. Salt, sage, rosemary, every rune and ward and sigil he can lay his hands on, none of them work, so dreaming of this, of fire and spirits and space, is starting to feel like a homecoming of sorts. He belongs here, somehow, where it doesn’t matter that he’s got the reach but doesn’t know how to use it, or has the gun but is a second too late every time, where the only things that matter are his fire, his fury, and his hunger.
The dead, their spirits and ghosts, are drawn to him, him and the other humans visiting here. He’s talked to a few of them before, despite being states and countries and oceans and years apart. They fear his fire, the humans do, the fire that bursts out of every pore here, but the dead reach for him, desperate to touch him, to let the fire wash over them, cleanse them, send them on. Here it is a gift, this heat, and he gives it freely.
Tonight, so tired on earth, so consumed by need, his fire burns apart from him, until the hands of the dead can no longer stretch to slide through him, until they no longer have to. He waits, eyes closed, turning at the speed of suns, until others, stronger dead and fearless humans, find him, tell him what he’s here to learn. A poltergeist disturbing a graveyard and the newly-dead in Washington State; a vaudun queen in New Orleans making zombies with the souls of other displaced spirits; a Ouija board possessing the children who play with it in New Jersey. Sam remembers them all, thanks the spirits for passing on their knowledge and he watches with flaming eyes as they either fade away or resume a lonely wandering on the starlit path. The other humans are next, and one gives him a message from Missouri about Jenny’s little boy having a touch of the Shining. One passes him some long-thought-forgotten knowledge about a clan of fae in Colorado and the best ways to kill and enslave them.
They tell him things, until his fire here is nearly gone, extinguished by the weight of empty space, and then a dark-skinned girl he’s never met before comes to him, stands with him, looks at him. “He ‘as loved you for years,” she sings, smile-lines crinkling around amber-coloured eyes. “What you t’ink now, lanmò-mennen? What you be t’inking now you know?” she asks, shows him a rune-covered palm, and leaves in a spark of heat, primal and dry, that reeks of kinship and calls for him to follow.
--
He does and finds himself awake in the motel room, fire crackling at the edges of his vision. “Dean,” he says, panicked, as he grapples with the sheets. “Dean!” Feet hit the floor and then Dean’s there, sitting on Sam’s bed, running hands over Sam’s face. “Sammy? What is it? Was it a vision? Are you okay? Sammy! Talk to me!”
Sam blinks, skin burning under his brother’s fingers, and the fire is gone from his sight, back under his skin. “I-” he starts, then stops, hunger climbing up his throat as Dean’s fingers still, pause. “Astral plane,” he finally says, and his brother’s hands stay where they are for a heartbeat longer than they should. “Washington state poltergeist and possessed Ouija board in Jersey. The dead are worried about a voodoo witch down south.”
“I will never fucking get used to that,” Dean finally says, shifting on the bed. “Why can’t they just let us read the damn paper like everyone else?” Sam laughs, ignores the edge underneath his brother’s words, ignores the need and rage and all-consuming hunger he feels, and sits up, throwing his arms around Dean, resting his forehead on Dean’s shoulder. He smells blood underneath Dean’s skin, smells oil, burnt metal, motel soap on the surface, and before he realises that this was a very bad move, he murmurs, “You came.” The words are heavy with meaning, weighted with measured intent, and as he picks his head up to lay spirit-blind eyes on Dean, Dean mutters, “Not yet.”
Fire floods through him like a tide rushing outward, leaving him momentarily clear-headed and hungry enough to turn an indecipherable smile on Dean and say, “I could help you with that,” before it gusts back, all of it at once, and he will always remember the utterly amazed and slightly horrified look he sees on Dean’s face as his eyes roll back in their orbits and all he knows are flames.
--
He opens his eyes before he remembers and his pained, “Oh, Jesus, fuck,” comes out soft, throbbing temples tempering the volume of his first words and their following expletives. His sight is back to normal, if not a little sensitive and Dean never shut the curtains last night, not with the only patch of sunlight in the room resting smugly on Sam’s face, eyes, warming his skin unnecessarily. Not that Dean cares, head covered by a blanket and halfway across the room, something Sam’s pained mind can’t comprehend as being anything but too far away.
Dean wakes with a yelp as the bed he’s sleeping on skids sideways, closes two-thirds of the distance between the two beds, and meets Sam’s gaze with an expression approaching resignation. “Put it back,” he says, and Sam shakes his head, thinking of a dark-skinned girl and feeling his bones burn. “Why not?” is the next question, and Sam shrugs, saying, “You were too far away. I missed you.”
“You’re either being a girl, are possessed again, or you’ve come back with a few more screws knocked loose,” Dean says, sitting up and stretching. “I’m hoping it’s the first,” he yawns, getting up, “because an exorcism at this time of the damn morning’s its own sin, and you can’t afford to be any more fucking loopy than you already are. I’m going for a shower. Make coffee.”
Sam watches as Dean walks to the small bathroom, studying the way his brother’s skin seems to fit, slip and slide, over toned muscles. Even this tired, half-stumbling, Dean’s graceful, sleepily predatorial, scratching his stomach and not noticing as his shirt rides up. Sam’s eyes fix on the thin strip of tanned flash he can see between the waistband of Dean’s boxers and the t-shirt, smooth and perfect, and he’s suddenly glad Dean’s shutting the door because one more second of that view, that hip-swaying walk, and he would’ve been out of bed and pressing Dean against the wall in a second, headache be damned.
He listens as the sink taps squeak on and then off, then as the shower’s turned on and water’s hitting walls and, a moment later, Dean. Sam leans back, head thumping against the wall in rhythm to the blood rushing through his veins, moving the other bed back to its place with a half-thought command. It feels so strange, this sudden need to have his brother, but the fire crackling under his skin can’t be ignored, not at this rate, not with the cryptic words of that amber-eyed girl rattling around his skull like a final pronouncement. He needs to talk to her again, needs to figure out how he can go from needing Jess, loving Jess, one day and feeling that same possessive hunger for his brother the next, only a spirit and a trip to the astral plane in between. A fleeting moment of paused heartbeats and breaths has him wondering, half-hope, half-fear, if the spirit did something, but he remembers the Christo, his recitation of the prayer, and breathes again.
He can’t let it go, so he gets of bed and cleans the salt up from around the beds, sketches out a pentagram with pine needles and makes coffee for Dean before sitting inside of the five-pointed star, point and Sam facing south. He closes the pentagram around him, dabs lavender-oil on his eyelids and lips, and thinks sideways, into the space all psychics can reach. With stunning precision, he can feel everyone who’s got the gift; can feel Missouri and her newest pupil in Lawrence, can feel the psychic who warned him about the fae, can feel a dozen of the lesser loa-ridden worried in New Orleans and the area around it. Reaching wider, he feels hundreds more, then thousands, and the space behind his eyelids glows with the concentration it takes to spread his mind open like this.
Y’wish your brot’er could see you now? he hears, and turns, focus narrowed to the grinning girl in front of him. Y’wish ‘im to fear your touch here, lanmò-mennen? Sam shakes his head, replies, He would never be afraid of me. She laughs, the sound like a silk caress on the inside of his skull, and he sees her hair move behind her, as if its alive and twining its way around her head, neck, shoulders. He wouldn’t be afraid of you, she tells him. But afraid of what you might see here, wit’out secrets, ‘is heart laid out before you? Yes. He waits, listening to her smile, and then asks, What did you mean, he’s loved me for years? She laughs again, says, Y’aren’t as dumb as y’are pretty, are you? It means, lanmò-mennen, that ‘e ‘as loved you for years. ‘As wanted you for years. When you left, y’broke ‘is heart.
That’s all Sam needs to slide back sideways into reality and he raises a hand to rub his head before his eyes snag on Dean, slouched in an uncomfortable motel chair and holding a cup of coffee, still steaming. “Back to normal?” he wants to know, and Sam says, “Yeah,” even as he’s watching the way droplets are sliding down the side of Dean’s face and neck, hair still wet from the shower, even as he’s watching the way Dean’s looking at him, and trying to ignore a deep gnawing hunger growing in the pit of his stomach.
--
They’re driving south on I-55 and Sam’s sitting in the passenger seat, legs cramping and head beginning to pound in time to the beat of Dean’s music. He’s trying to think, trying to ignore his own raging need in favour of thinking about this as logically as he can to decide if the girl’s right or if she’s even real. Dean keeps looking at him, as if inviting conversation, but he thinks that if he opens his mouth anything from ‘Do you think Medusa could be existing as a fourteen year old Haitian in the psychic and astral planes?’ to ‘Is it true that you want me?’ to ‘Hey, so I’m burning up and decided you look like dinner; wanna fuck?’ will come out, and none of those sound like good ice-breakers.
--
An hour south of St. Louis, he pulls out his dad’s journal and flips through it, looking for any mention of a Haitian Medusa and knowing its pointless; his father never left the country and a fourteen year old wouldn’t have had enough time to cause trouble at any rate. His head’s splitting and he feels as if the air around him will explode into flames at any minute, and he can’t focus and expect to control himself at the same time, so his head falls backwards and he starts counting to eight thousand in Greek, trying to rebuild the walls on his need and fury. Dean asks if he’s all right and he says, “M’head hurts,” and then nothing but sleep and fire.
--
They drive all day, stopping only to re-fuel the Impala, taking care of themselves at the same time. His bones and skin and muscles are humming, but with repressive spells and charms instead of a hunger for sex and destruction that he can’t admit to and wants to avoid. The woman in the truck stop outside of Southaven, Mississippi, looks at him with narrowed eyes as he puts a bottle of Coke and a couple granola bars down on the counter. Sam smiles, all puppy-dog charm and pushes his bangs away from his face, watching as her eyes widen. She rings up his things and cashes him out without taking a penny. Dean, still standing near the chocolate, makes a move, but Sam holds his hand out to the side, making his brother pause. The woman’s eyes flick between the two of them, and as she puts Sam’s things in a bag, she lifts a finger up and traces out a small sigil on her left cheek. Sam’s grin only gets larger as he nods.
“Oh, thank the Baron,” she breathes out, and this time Dean comes up to the counter with a Coke of his own and six bags of M&M’s. The woman puts Dean’s things in the bag with Sam’s, and says, “Be careful,” looking at Sam, who can see the faint orb of spirits around the woman. “There’s a lot of nasty things out there.” She holds the bag out and Sam beats Dean to take it, his fingers brushing the back of the woman’s hand. He gets flashes, then, memories transmitted like visions, of blood and snakes and power. When his sight clears, she says, “Oh, lanmò-mennen,” low and quiet and distressed. “Why you even fightin’ it?” He smiles, a trace of determination bound up with threads of repression and denial and hunger and soul-deep want. “Because I have to try,” he says. She nods, Sam says, “C’mon,” and the brothers leave.
“You wanna tell me what that was about?” Dean asks, five minutes later, when Sam’s said nothing and they’re back on the highway. “What she meant, and what she called you, and how the fuck she knew about us?” Sam thinks about telling Dean nothing, or telling him again about the psychic plane, how it feels there, what its like, or seeing if maybe his big brother will know what the name means, what the loa-ridden have called him since he bumped into one at Stanford. He just taps the side of his head, though, and says, “She’s psychic.”
“So, what?” Dean says, two miles further down the interstate, two miles closer to New Orleans. “You’ve met before? I know you’re fucking hard to miss and all, but I thought Missouri said something about how the physical doesn’t translate.”
“It doesn’t,” Sam says, “but I’ve got,” he trails off, several thousand different words clamouring to be spoken. “Power,” he finally finishes. Dean snorts, says, “Well, put a cork in it, or this damn witch’s gonna know we’re coming.” Sam thinks that two days ago, he would’ve rolled his eyes or made a smart-ass retort, but that was two days ago and things have severely fucked themselves up since then. He’s hearing all sorts of things in Dean’s voice now, things like worry, like jealousy, possessive edges sharp like razor blades, so he just says, “Okay,” and stares out of the window without seeing anything, ignoring his granola bars.
iii.
..complication..
They get off the highway about five miles from Louisiana. Dean doesn’t say much when Sam asks him to find a less-populated road, whether it's because Dean prefers the back country roads or because, by that point, Sam’s grinding his teeth the way only strong magic can make him and not noticing, too intent on the buzz of strong black magic that only grows more and more annoying the closer to New Orleans they get. The Impala coasts to a stop at the border and they get out of the car and walk to an invisible line separating Mississippi from Louisiana. Dean looks at Sam, who looks back, shrugs, and swallows before holding out a hand. His palm hits something and the air around the collision flames into witchfire. Dean reacts by shooting the air with rock salt and the impact sends a shockwave that throws them back on the ground. Sam holds his head, one hand unnaturally warm, sizzling from the fire as the other’s cold, so cold, like the rest of him, like he’s never felt before. She’s powerful, the vaudun mambo doing this, powerful in a way he’s never felt before, and he can feel the air still, smell the snakes before they slither out to wait on the other side of the boundary line.
“Shit,” Sam hears, and then Dean’s saying something else, but Sam can’t hear it. The witch put some level of binding on one of the snakes, a familiar spell or something, because he can feel her now, right there and farther away at the same time, and she’s talking to him, voice filled with the promise of darkness, of violence and need and hunger. Oh, chile, she whispers, hands trailing through his brain like water. Oh, chile, I could teach you so much. I could teach you everything, lanmò-mennen.
He stands up, helped by eager reaching tendrils of her magic, and walks over to the border, to that shield and those snakes. Dean’s there, right at his side, trying to get him to stop, to go back, to “Fucking wait already; Jesus, Sammy, what the fuck’s gotten into you lately?” He looks at Dean, the muttered Christo not fazing him, and says, “She stole some of my power and I’m getting it back. Be ready to salt and burn the fuckers the second you don’t see fire.”
“The second I don’t see-Sammy, wait!” But of course he doesn’t, just ignores the cold and puts both hands on the barrier, pushing. His vision explodes in witchfire, his world starts burning black and lavender, and even as the witch pulls at his powers, he tugs back. Chile, you can’t stand a chance of livin’ if you don’t accept your power, she says, and Sam replies, No, of course not, easily, as if they weren’t trying to drain and damage the other as much as possible.
He knows she’s right, though; he can feel witchfire licking at the corners of his mind, trying to swallow him whole, and there’s only one thing he can do as much as he doesn’t want to. He calls back his fire and all that goes with it. It roars into him, into familiar channels of blood, breath, and bone, and he feels like he’s on fire again, need and desire warring with anger and desperation, and then he pushes with all of it and his vision goes white. He stumbles back, hears gunfire and smells gasoline, and he can see a pyre of burning snakes when his vision clears.
“Fuck!” Dean says, pushing Sam against the Impala and grazing his fingers on Sam’s face, eyelids, neck. “She didn’t hurt you, did she?” Dean demands to know, and Sam laughs, his hands reaching to take Dean’s wrists, hold them where they’re hovering above his chest. “I’m fine, Dean,” he says, feeling the last traces of the witch laughing as she burns out of his mind in the wake of the fire settling around him again. “Honest.”
“You better be,” Dean mutters, not moving as he sighs and says, “Why’s it always gotta be you, huh? Doing these fucking psychotic things and getting-” Sam laughs, a low sound deep in his throat, and Dean pauses mid-tirade to glare and tries to get his hands back from Sam’s grasp. Sam’s grip tightens and he feels fire and pain and yearning and he’s leaning down to kiss Dean before he knows it; Dean, who’s just standing there in something approaching desperate fascination. Sam can’t seem to take his eyes off of Dean’s lips, the tongue that darts out to glide over them, leave them glistening, and the laugh in his throat turns into the beginnings of a rumbling growl. “Sam…?” Dean breathes, and the slight puff of air feathers over Sam’s lips.
That feeling, a touch so intimate, breaks something inside of Sam and he lets go of Dean, pushing him away with a light shove, closing his eyes and trying to swallow down everything inside of him that’s screaming to take, own, use. Not-so-random words flit across his mind, things like ‘Jess’ and ‘brother’ and ‘wrong’ and he’s so consumed with fighting himself that he’s paying no attention to Dean, which means that when Dean fists his hands in Sam’s shirt and shoves him harder against the Impala, hard enough to knock his head back, he’s surprised and not a little angry.
“Dude,” Dean says, low and pissed-off and Sam recognises the tone, the one that Dean usually finds after something’s hurt him and is about to die at the end of a shotgun or the bottom of a bottle of holy water. “What. The. Fuck,” Dean carries on, and half of Sam is trying to find a way to explain this and apologise while the other half’s trying to decide whether to give in to those fists and hard eyes or teach Dean a lesson about dominance. “What. The. Fuck!” Dean repeats, shaking Sam a little bit harder with every word, and Sam bares his teeth and snarls, gets right in his brother’s face and snarls, and when Dean says, “Well, I can fucking work with that,” he’s not surprised to find their lips mashed together the next second, teeth and tongue and nothing soft, just pressure and biting, and when the fists full of Sam’s shirt Dean’s holding become fists of Sam that Dean’s trying to claw his way into, there’s blood in the air and on his chest and in their mouths and it is so perfect that he can only stand there when Dean pulls back and starts cursing up a storm.
--
They don’t talk about it, what it means or what’s behind it-they are both Winchesters, after all. Sam’s sitting in the passenger seat, scrying the clear roads to New Orleans and giving Dean directions in an absent-minded tone, focused on the map and crystal. Still, he’s not too focused to see Dean out of the corner of one eye, back rigid and knuckles white on the steering wheel, jaw clenched and if looks could kill, all the traffic they haven’t seen would be sixty feet under dirt and salt. He’s not sure why, tracing lines in the psychic plane, transmitting them to the physical and trying to hide their location from the searching mambo. He feels as if everything is clear for the first time in his life, as if he’s home in a way he never was with Jess, fire humming quietly, content and pleased and sated for the moment. He’s languid and calm, telling Dean to turn right, turn left, keep going, don’t stop, and too engrossed by sparkling lines of territorial possession to question anything now that his life has taken two steps to the side he somehow always knew was there but only just found.
With Dean driving like he is, New Orleans looms larger every minute, until they are on the west side of Lake Ponchatrain and even Dean’s spine is tingling. “Do we need another mambo?” Dean asks, hesitant with the vibes he’s apparently tapping into, though Sam’s felt it since they entered the state, felt power condense in the air like stinging rain. Sam shakes his head, says, “No,” and narrows his vision until he can see the orbs of the witch’s power, hers and her familiars, zombies, disciples. “You have to trust me, Dean,” he says, and spirit-tuned ears hear something about ‘always’ and ‘lately’ and ‘more than a few screws loose.’ Sam turns and looks at Dean, asks, “Trust me, Dean?”
Dean stops the car, right there in the middle of the road, lake on one side and bayou on the other, and meets Sam’s gaze. Sam knows he’s been off lately, wants to apologise for intensity he wishes he didn’t have, wants to apologise for having the gift and not being as good a hunter and for leaving and for Meg, oh God, but not for coming back and staying this time, not for Jess, not for whatever he’s feeling now. It’s funny, his eyes say, mouth too dry for speech, that he’s supposed to be the smart one and yet he missed this, took for granted the way Dean worried about him and looked after him, the way that Dean was somehow always there, calming him with a touch or a look. It makes sense when he thinks about it, he wants to say, putting things together like puzzle pieces and not surprised to hear them click: how jealous he was of Cassie; how unapologetic he was even after Layla died; how much the cage scared him because Dean wasn’t there. I prayed for you at Stanford, he wants to say. I said the rosary for you, I lit candles for you, I kept the window unlatched for you, and the only reason I didn’t go with you the instant you appeared was because I knew, somehow, and I knew that this was how it would end, with me asking you and you remembering every time I proved you couldn’t.
He doesn’t say anything, but Dean makes a noise and looks away, exhaling deeply, breath steaming in the air-conditioned car. “Dean?” he says, the single word falling nowhere until Dean nods, breathes out through his nose and says, “Yeah. Yeah, I trust you,” like his voice has just shattered.
--
“I still don’t think you should be doing this,” Dean says an hour later as Sam sketches the outline of a vévé with red brick dust inside of a circle laid with salt and silver. Sam grunts, focuses on the curlicues needed to invoke Maman Brigitte, ignoring the drone of mosquitoes waiting outside the protective circle. “It could go wrong, Sam, so wrong. And what happened to never letting anyone possess you again, huh? This witch isn’t worth the risks.”
Sam looks at Dean, that edge of awareness from before back, clinging to the beads of sweat on his forehead, so he wipes his hands off and goes over to his brother. “Trust me,” he says, taking Dean’s face in his hands and kissing his brother’s forehead, thinking an incantation at the same time. He steps back, then, and thinks of the witch, fire pulsing in his veins, and Dean’s muttered prayer keeps him from summoning the loa before he’s ready. “Misericordia, Dei,” Dean says, eyes wide, as he sees the witch’s flares of power floating in the liquid heat, lighting up midnight darkness. “Fuck, Sammy.” Sam nods, goes to place a cross, a pack of playing cards, and a half-full bottle of Jack in the middle of the vévé. “Now I really don’t think you should be doing this,” Dean says and Sam doesn’t look up as he replies, “If not me, then who?”
“Fuck,” Dean breathes again as the sight-sharing spell wears off. “What can I do?” Sam steps into the vévé, plants his feet, and shrugs. “She might send zombies,” he says. “Or snakes, again. Stay in the circle and kill them.” Dean nods and says, “Right,” nods again and says, “Right. I can do that. Jesus.”
Sam pulls out a knife, murmurs, “Fiat misericordia tua, Pater, super nos,” and slices his palm open. The smell of blood thickens the already heavy air around him, turns everything crimson and calls the fires. He can feel the loa before his blood even hits the vévé and thinks, too late, that Dean was right: this is going to go very, very wrong.
He tries to catch the blood before it falls, tilting his palm flat first and holding the other one underneath second, but some gets through. Blood hits the cross, sinks into the brick dust, and the vévé hisses, steams in supercharged air. A moment of nothing, when he prays he was wrong, but then his spine bends backwards and he screams, high and reedy, feeling a loa burrow itself in his mind. It strikes at him over and over, and even as it shreds his mind, Sam can feel his skin splitting, can feel the blood keep pouring on the vévé, feeding the connection. You killed them! the loa screams, making Sam buck, shriek, and he tries to say, She enslaved them, but can’t form words around his tongue.
Maman, is all he can think and, just as abruptly, his bones loosen and he drops to his knees in the vévé, shaking as a sweet breeze ghosts across his face, followed by the barest hint of spirit pressure. I’ll make Ti-Jean wait ‘til the Rada gets here, a thick, honeyed voice promises, full of spice and sugar, and he wants to weep but finds himself frozen. Why’d you call me, child? Why’d you need Maman Brigitte? she asks, and her hands rub his shoulders. Maman, the mambo here, is all he can say before she interrupts, I know, child, and someone’ll be along soon to fix it, don’t fret. You tell Maman why you called her, heya? Sam says, Maman, and hears her laugh, feels her press dry lips on his cheek. Oh, I know, child. Believe me, I know. Now you listen to Maman, y’hear? Try not to get all worked up about it. ‘Zulie and I talked ‘bout it, and we ain’t promising roses, but neither of you’d want that, would you?
She laughs again and the sound coaxes his fire out of his bones and into the space around him. The vévé starts to smoke as she says, There, child, her fingers trailing over his shoulders and across his back as she starts to leave. Marrow and blood, and your screaming for Ti-Jean earlier. My blessing as well, so you just sit back and wait for the Rada now. She leaves him, but the bayou sighs and Sam can feel her, bound in the lines of the vévé, waiting.
“Sam?” Dean calls out. “What’s going on? There aren’t any fucking zombies yet.” Sam’s about to say ‘give them time,’ or ‘watch out for the snakes,’ or ‘let’s leave, get me out of here,’ but his spine bends again, every muscle tenses, and this time he feels like he’s being flayed open.
The noises he’s making bring Dean to the edge of the vévé, but Sam holds out a hand before Dean can kick the brick-dust design and dispel the loa. “You worry about yourself, son,” he says to Dean, but the voice isn’t his, is rich and Creole and older than anything Sam’s heard before. “You got your own set of troubles,” he says, and then comes the stench of the dead, preceding a mass of them with fresh blood dripping off of their chins. Dean swears and starts shooting off heads and limbs and Sam closes his eyes, trusting Dean to keep him safe in a way he doesn’t trust the salt circle.
Ti-Jean tells me you boys killed some snakes. That true? No excuses, just a Yes, sir, the title automatic; after years of his father, Sam knows authority when its talking to him and he wouldn’t have needed Maman Brigitte to tell him that this is Dhambala riding him. Well, points for honesty, son. Tell me why you done it, Dhambala orders and Sam gives him everything: the witch, the psychic plane, the tug-of-war over his power, the vaudun mambo at the truck-stop, even the Haitian Medusa, which makes Dhambala laugh. Sam waits, prays in a different corner of his mind, and almost jumps out of the vévé when Dhambala says, All right. Ti-Jean, Maman Brigitte, lanmò-mennen. You all listen to Dhambala now. Sam’s head is going to split apart, three loa all digging talons into his mind, all there, waiting. He feels another press of lips, this time on his forehead, and an arm go ‘round his shoulders, holding him. We ready, Rada, Maman says, voice pouring over Sam’s pain like camphor. What says Dhambala?
The boy and his brother killed snakes, but the serpents were under compulsion from Marinette’s mambo. Ti-Jean, you wanna take it up with anyone, take it up with your sister’s witch, y’hear? And get them snakes away from these boys. This one’ll carry the pain you gave him and that’s all from you. Sam feels Ti-Jean leave, like pulling nettles from the pads of his feet and groans because he can’t scream anymore. Maman Brigitte soothes him and listens to Dhambala. Maman, some of those are yours, the Rada loa says and Maman says she knows, just been waitin’. Take them home, Maman. Boy here and I’ll deal with the mambo and Marinette. Maman Brigitte fades away and Sam can feel the blank spots of half the zombies follow her back to their graves. I’ll take the rest of these, son. Call me when you need me and I’ll help with your mambo. Odds are you’ll get the other two as well, but it ain’t no use trying to get them to listen, Dhambala says before he leaves as well, and Sam’s muscles give out all at once. He collapses to the ground, laying on his side on the vévé, skull feeling three sizes too small, the sting of oozing blood from Ti-Jean’s marks all over his body.
He doesn’t know how long he lays there before he hears Dean kick the vévé apart and kneel next to him. Sam opens one eye, grins tiredly and stupidly at his brother, who glowers. “That was fun,” Sam rasps. “Wanna do it again?” Dean snorts, sits back. “No. Can you move?” Sam’s left hand twitches and he says, “Give me a few minutes. Tell me about the zombies.” Dean laughs, “What’s to tell, Sammy? Dead, rotting animated flesh-eaters meet rock salt. End of story.”
Part Two